World's top think-tanks

Here, following up last year's post on the same, are the Global Go To Think Tank Ratings for 2009

From the introduction by James G. McGann, Director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, at the University of Pennsylvania:

The Global Go To Think Tank Rankings was launched in 2006 in response to the never-ending
requests that I received from journalists, scholars and government officials to provide a list of the
leading think tanks in a particular country or region of the world. When I first designed the
project it was intended to identify some of the leading think tanks in the world in an attempt to
answer these inquiries in a more systematic fashion. Over the last 4 years the process has been
refined and the number of institutions and individuals involved in the project has grown steadily.

I was chagrined to see Norway trounced by our Nordic neighbors in last year's survey, with only 15 think tanks as compared with 26 in Finland, 30 in Denmark and 67 in Sweden. That seems unfair, with all the money we have here, and this year it's even worse; there are now 34 in Denmark and 74 in Sweden, but still only 15 in Norway. We've always been told by the U.S, "you may be a small nation, but you punch above your weight in foreign affairs," but perhaps the U.S. says that to everybody. Anyway, here's a point of light: Norway's PRIO, the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, is ranked 20 in the category "Top 50 Think Tanks Worldwide (non-U.S.)." The only other Nordic think-tank in that august company is Sweden's Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), at number 4.  First three spots in the U.S. and Non-U.S. category go to Chatham House, UK, Transparency International, Germany, and  International Crisis Group, Belgium.

The top 15 think-tanks all told are (according to this survey)
1. Brookings Institution, US
2. Council on Foreign Relations, US
3. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, US
4. RAND Corporation, US
5. Cato Institute, US
6. Chatham House, UK
7. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), UK
8. Heritage Foundation, US
9. Center for Strategic and International Studies, US
10. Peterson Institute for International Economics, US
11. International Crisis Group, Belgium
12. American Enterprise Institute, US
13. World Bank Research Department, US
14. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, US
15. Amnesty International, UK